Blossom is the most forgiving subject in the catalogue and almost nobody says so. The petals are small, irregular and repeated, which means a wobbly edge disappears instead of showing. A straight horizon or a face punishes an unsteady hand. A cherry tree does not.
So the sorting below is by how much work the canvas asks for, not by how good it looks. Every one of them is in Floral and Botanical.
If it is your first kit
Cherry Blossom Festival has the largest regions of the group and a strong pink against a dark trunk, so the picture holds together even when it is half finished. Start here.
Warmth in Blossom is the warmest palette we print for this subject, closer to apricot than to pink, and it suits a room with wooden furniture in it where a cold pink would sit badly.
Blossom Station puts the tree next to architecture. That gives you straight lines to rest the eye on, which makes it easier than it looks, and it is the one that works in a hallway rather than a bedroom.
For a second or third canvas
Cherry Blossom Bridge is the classic composition: water, a curved bridge, blossom over both. The reflection doubles the number of pink regions and they have to be slightly duller than the ones above the waterline or the painting goes flat.
Blossom River Trail runs the tree line into depth, so the far blossom is smaller and paler than the near blossom. It is the kit that teaches perspective without mentioning it.
Almond Blossom after Van Gogh is a different proposition altogether. The original is flat, graphic and built on that particular turquoise, and reproducing it is an exercise in restraint: stay inside the numbers and do not try to shade anything.
The one that is not really about the tree
Leopard Among Blossoms uses the blossom as a field and puts an animal through it. Far more colors, far more time, and the only one of the set that will dominate a wall.
Size and color count for blossom
Blossom rewards a bigger canvas more than most subjects, because every additional centimetre becomes more petals rather than more empty space. 16x20 inches at $24.95 is where these kits start to look right, and 20x26 at $29.95 for the bridge and the river trail. The 24 color option is genuinely enough here: pink, white and bark do not need forty eight values.
A photograph of a tree you know, in your own street or a park you walk through, goes through the custom kit page and comes back as a numbered canvas. Shoot it against sky rather than against buildings and the tracing has an easier time of it.
Blossom sits inside a much older set of images, and if that is the thread you want to pull, our piece on Japanese art runs from the woodblock printers to the kits we stock now.
All kits ship with the canvas, the acrylics, three brushes and a printed reference. Free shipping to the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia and New Zealand, thirty day guarantee.
Two recent ones: the Red Bridge and Cherry Blossoms and the Blue Jay on a Cherry Branch.
